"Unserious." That's the word Andrew Sullivan used to describe McCain's pick for Vice President.
After three days, I find it hard not to agree.
From every blog I've read--liberal, conservative, and news-ish--the striking note is that McCain's team did surprisingly little vetting of his VP choice.
Not only that, by choosing an unknown there's a rush of curiosity and scrutiny--which was in fact, the idea. McCain needed some media attention and he's certainly got it. Palin might be able to take all this and run with it. But the first 72 hours have been incredibly difficult.
Ben Smith at Politico put it very well: "I can't remember the last introduction to the national scene this rocky, and it gets worse every hour."
Here's the biggest problem for Palin as I see it:
For a virtual unknown to be launched into the national spotlight, it's inevitable that a few skeletons in the closet are brought to the forefront. They may not even be skeletons so much as things that are just ... interesting or surprising to the general public. This is going to be the case for anyone, I would imagine. You, me, or the governor of Alaska.
So inviting an unknown into the spotlight would seem to guarantee some level of "did you hear X about McCain's choice of VP?" We're all interested in learning more about this person and it's inevitable this happens.
Knowing that any pick of an unknown is going to generate these kind of questions, you would think McCain would be extra-sensitive to the issues raised about his choice. Instead, Palin has two big negative issues that tell me either she wasn't vetted or McCain thought the positives would outweigh these two big negatives.
A) she's the subject of an ongoing corruption investigation that is supposed to be concluded by October 31 (talk about bad timing). After the Republican corruption charges that helped sway the 2006 election against Republicans, I would be looking for someone as squeaky clean here as I could. Not to mention: what happens if the investigation ends up saying Palin abused her office? That's a huge unknown and, I would have thought, scared McCain away right there.
B) The second skeleton is that
two confirmed sources say Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, which seeks a legal vote on the status of Alaska as a state with an eye toward secession. It is not strictly a secessionist group, but it's dang close to one. You might think "the Party of Lincoln" would not be favor of someone who flirted with putting the Union to a vote.
Forget the rest of it for a second and consider just these two points above. These two points seem like huge marks against Palin to be a VP candidate right now. In 4 or 8 years she might have made an impressive candidate, with a corruption scandal well behind her (however it turns out) and the Alaskan Independence Party firmly distanced.
I'll turn to Ross Douthat, a conservative blogger I've read for awhile but whom I suddenly find myself quoting rather frequently.
He writes, "I'm sure this is part of the reason I'm pulling so hard for her to succeed: She's a politician I've liked for a while who's been thrust onto the national stage perhaps before her time, and there's a chance she'll crash and burn in service to a losing Presidential campaign." And then he concludes, "if it turns out that the next two months transform Palin into a national laughingstock with no future outside Alaska, I won't be terribly happy with John McCain's decision-making process."
I'm very interested to see how things play out at the convention and beyond over the next week or so. But as Ben Smith said, it's been very rocky so far.
9:30 pm UPDATE: I just read this on the NYT: "Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin."
Here's my question. What exactly is the team on the ground going to do if they find anything more?
Then this:
"They didn’t seriously consider her until four or five days from the time she was picked, before she was asked, maybe the Thursday or Friday before," said a Republican close to the campaign. "This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn’t get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe [Lieberman] or [Tom] Ridge."
Read the whole article. Very interesting stuff.
